LOA14:OSCAR:LOS ANGELES,CALIFORNIA,15FEB00 - UNDATED PUBLICITY PHOTOGRAPH - Actress Samantha Morton is shown in a scene from the drama film " Sweet and Lowdown. " Morton received an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actress in a motion picture February 15. The Academy Awards will be presented March 26 in Los Angeles. cfm/Photo Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics REUTERS CAT less

LOA14:OSCAR:LOS ANGELES,CALIFORNIA,15FEB00 - UNDATED PUBLICITY PHOTOGRAPH - Actress Samantha Morton is shown in a scene from the drama film " Sweet and Lowdown. " Morton received an Academy Award nomination as ... more

Photo: HO

Image 3 of 3

For Morton, when it rains, it pours

1 / 3

Back to Gallery

2003-11-23 04:00:00 PDT Los Angeles -- Curled up in a black Balenciaga dress and framed by a cream-colored bedspread, Samantha Morton lets fly a hearty laugh. "It's gone mad," the actress exclaims when an annoying cell-phone melody erupts. Scurrying out of the hotel room to banish the unruly device, Morton returns, hops on the bed and eyes a bag of lemon drops.

Could this beaming, candy-craving 26-year-old pixie be the same Samantha Morton who over the past four years has conjured onscreen angst more acutely than just about any other actress of her generation?

Absolutely. Morton says she has no reason to be haunted because when she makes a movie, she just gets out of the way and lets the characters take over.

Right Now: Prince William and Kate Middleton Attend St. Patrick's Day Parade in West LondonInStyle

Jewelry designer Martin Katz's path to fameAssociated Press

Spoiler Alert: Sean Bean doesn't die in latest roleAssociated Press

But more on that later. First, consider her oeuvre: Morton played a junkie in "Jesus' Son," a mute jazz groupie in "Sweet and Lowdown" and a "pre- cog" who foresees murder and mayhem in "Minority Report." Last year she also turned in a little-seen tour de force as "Morvern Callar," an apparently conscience-free grocery clerk who dismembers her boyfriend's body and submits his novel under her own name in an effort to escape the drudgery of her small- town life.

Morton's reputation is likely to be enhanced by her performance in Jim Sheridan's new film "In America," set in a New York City slum circa 1973. Morton plays an Irish immigrant trying to forge a new life for her two daughters and her husband (newcomer Paddy Considine) following the death of their son.

If Morton can hold her own opposite actors like Billy Crudup, Sean Penn and Tom Cruise, and if she can please directors as disparate in sensibility as Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and Sheridan, whose "My Left Foot" and "In the Name of the Father" each earned best-picture Oscar nominations, then why hasn't Morton herself become a name-above-the-title star?

"It's a choice," she replies. "I remember when I was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globes and all that for 'Sweet and Lowdown,' I could have moved to L.A. and met everybody but I just didn't feel ready at that point. It's a huge responsibility. There's a lot of promotion involved, and you have to give up a certain amount of your personal life."

Which isn't to say that Morton is averse to stardom. "If, in 10 years' time I happen to be in a position where my name can attract people to the cinema," she says, "then I would be absolutely charmed because then it's earned. People will go see you not because a magazine has put you on the cover and not because you're the newest thing with the right dress and the right shoes and 'My God you've got an amazing body.' For whatever small audience I do have, they can trust me, trust my choices, and trust that I have integrity so that if they go to see a film with my name attached, they'll know they're not going to be robbed."

Morton landed the part of "In America's" Sarah only after the original choice, Kate Winslet, had begged off the project. "Obviously there's a protocol," Morton explains. "When the filmmakers get turned down (by an actor),

the role kind of comes back out on the market again. I've been somebody that gets a script based on my talent but not necessarily based on bums in seats."

Initially intrigued by the notion of working with Sheridan, Morton was thrilled when she read the script. "It's the first time I've played anyone who's completely at peace with who they are," she says. "I like the way this film portrays the relationship between man and wife, between parents and children in a very realistic way. It's not cutesy. You see that Sarah and Johnny have gone through a lot, they've fallen out of love and now they're realizing all the love that's still left between them. Portraying that was very hard work."

Morton has a 4-year old daughter of her own and lives with her husband, actor Charlie Creed-Miles, in England. Although motherhood helped ground her performance, Morton says she generally avoids relying too heavily on firsthand experience when fleshing out a character. "I don't draw on my own stuff, but I did when I was starting out as an actress. To make the tears come, I'd imagine awful things happening to people in my family or people who I loved. It felt a bit sick or scary or something."

At age 16, Morton starred in a racy BBC melodrama titled "Band of Gold," which made her a sensation in England but left her emotionally drained. "I suppose it was a bit like 'The Sopranos' is here," Morton says. "I became famous for playing this young girl. She was a crack addict, she was a prostitute, she was a lesbian, she was a mass murderer. I was acting all this stuff out and at the end I was, like, empty. I had nothing left. I'd given every ounce of me, my relationship was crumbling with my boyfriend, I didn't see my friends and I was like, 'What is this all about? Why am I doing this? Is it ego?' Because if it were just about drama, I could go off and be happy doing street theater in Poland."

Morton realized she needed to develop a less exhausting approach to her roles if she wanted to sustain some semblance of a balanced life. "When I play a character, I don't try to force them to perform for the camera, if you get what I mean," she says. "Whether it's Patty in 'Sweet and Lowdown' or Michelle in 'Jesus' or Agatha in 'Minority Report,' I inhabit them and just let them be.

I become somebody who's so relaxed in front of the camera that it's almost like you don't do anything. It sounds absolutely pretentious and weird, but every day before I go to work, I let in whoever I am (playing) and I meditate in that space and I ask to be given energy. Sam's still there as well, but I kind of go, 'This (character) has a right to be here.' For me it's about making someone alive through breath. I know that sounds absolutely bonkers, but that is my way of being."

Bonkers or not, Morton's method obviously works. "The truth about great actors," says Sheridan, her "In America" boss, "is that they're very sensitive and they're also great bullies. By that I mean they can tell you what they're thinking without having to open their mouths because they create a force field of emotion. If a picture's worth a thousand words, the human facial expression is worth 10,000, and Samantha has these amazing eyes. She has this quicksilver ability to transform, like Meryl Streep with an edge. I wouldn't describe Samantha as an easy actress to work with, but she is very powerful and easy for a director like me to get a performance out of because she's able to compel the audience by the force of her personality."

For Morton, channeling that outsized presence into the confines of a domestic drama proved to be every bit as demanding as her more extreme portrayals. "It was a real challenge to play somebody so normal," she says. "Sarah loves the man she's with and loves her children and that's her focus in life, and I think that's incredible."